The Ballad of Peckham Rye Read online

  ‘Mr Weedin,’ he said to Dougal, ‘is not an Arts man. But he knows his job inside out. Wonderful people, Personnel staff. If you don’t tread on his toes you’ll be all right with Personnel. Then of course there’s Welfare. You’ll have some dealings with Welfare, bound to do. But we feel you must find your own level and the job is what you make it — Come in, Mr Weedin, and meet Mr Douglas, M.A., who has just joined us. Mr Douglas has come from Edinburgh to take charge of human research.’

  If you look inexperienced or young and go shopping for food in the by-streets of Peckham it is as different from shopping in the main streets as it is from shopping in Kensington or the West End. In the little shops in the Peckham by-streets, the other customers take a deep interest in what you are buying. They concern themselves lest you are cheated. Sometimes they ask you questions of a civil nature, such as: Where do you work? Is it a good position? Where are you stopping? What rent do they take off you? And according to your answer they may comment that the money you get is good or the rent you have to pay is wicked, as the case may be. Dougal, who had gone to a small grocer on a Saturday morning, and asked for a piece of cheese, was aware of a young woman with a pram, a middle-aged woman, and an old man accumulating behind him. The grocer came to weigh the cheese.

  ‘Don’t you give him that,’ said the young woman; ‘it’s sweating.’

  ‘Don’t let him give you that, son,’ said the old man. The grocer removed the piece of cheese from the scales and took up another.

  ‘You don’t want as much as all that,’ said the older woman. ‘Is it just for yourself?’

  ‘Only for me,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Then you want to ask for two ounces,’ she said. ‘Give him two ounces,’ she said. ‘You just come from Ireland, son?’

  ‘No, Scotland,’ said Dougal.

  ‘Thought he was Irish from his voice,’ commented the old man.

  ‘Me too,’ said the younger woman. ‘Irish sounds a bit like Scotch like, to hear it.’

  The older woman said, ‘You want to learn some experience son. Where you stopping?’

  ‘I’ve got temporary lodgings in Brixton. I’m looking for a place round here.’

  The grocer forgot his grievances and pointed a finger at Dougal.

  ‘You want to go to a lady up on the Rye, name of Frierne. She’s got nice rooms; just suit you. All gentlemen. No ladies, she won’t have.’

  ‘Who’s she?’ said the young woman. ‘Don’t know her.’

  ‘Don’t know Miss Frierne?’ said the old man.

  The older woman said, ‘She’s lived up there all her life. Her father left her the house. Big furniture removers they used to be.’

  ‘Give me the address,’ said Dougal. ‘and I’ll be much obliged.’

  ‘I think she charges,’ said the older woman. ‘You got a good position, son?’

  Dougal leaned on the counter so that his high shoulder heaved higher still. He turned his lean face to answer. ‘I’ve just started at Meadows, Meade & Grindley.’

  ‘I know them,’ said the younger woman. ‘A nice firm. The girl Waghorn works there.’

  ‘Miss Frierne’s rooms go as high as thirty, thirty-five shillings,’ remarked the older woman to the grocer.

  ‘Inclusive heat and light,’ said the grocer.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the older woman. ‘She had meters put in the rooms, that I do know. You can’t do inclusive these days.’

  The grocer looked away from the woman with dosed eyes and opened them again to address Dougal.

  ‘If Miss Frierne has a vacancy you’ll be a lucky chap,’ he said. ‘Mention my name.’

  ‘What department you in?’ said the old man to Dougal.

  ‘The Office,’ said Dougal.

  ‘The Office don’t get paid much,’ said the man.

  ‘That depends,’ the grocer said.

  ‘Good prospects?’ said the older woman to Dougal.

  ‘Yes, fine,’ Dougal said.

  ‘Let him go up Miss Frierne’s,’ said the old man.

  ‘Just out of National Service?’ said the older woman.

  ‘No, they didn’t pass me.’

  ‘That would be his deformity,’ commented the old man, pointing at Dougal’s shoulder.

  Dougal nodded and patted his shoulder.

  ‘You was lucky,’ said the younger woman and laughed a good deal.

  ‘Could I speak to Miss Fergusson?’ Dougal said. The voice at the other end of the line said, ‘Hold on. I’ll see if she’s in.

  Dougal stood in Miss Frierne’s wood-panelled entrance hail, holding on and looking around him.

  At last she came. ‘Jinny.’ Dougal said. ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘I’ve found a room in Peckham. I can come over and see you if you like. How —‘Listen, I’ve left some milk boiling on the stove. I’ll ring you back.’

  ‘Jinny, are you feeling all right? Maria Cheeseman wants me to write her autobiography.’

  ‘It will be boiling over. I’ll ring you back.’

  ‘You don’t know the number.’

  But she had rung off.

  Dougal left fourpence on the telephone table and went up to his new room at the very top of Miss Frierne’s house.

  He sat down among his belongings, which were partly in and partly out of his zipper bag. There was a handsome brass bedstead with a tall railed head along which was gathered a muslin curtain. It was the type of bed which was becoming fashionable again, but Miss Frierne did not know this. It was the only item of furniture in the room for which she had apologized; she had explained it was only temporary and would soon be replaced by a new single divan. Dougal detected in this little speech a good intention, repeated to each newcomer, which never came off. He assured her that he liked the brass bed with its railings and knobs. Could he remove, perhaps, the curtain? Miss Frierne said, no, it needed the bit of curtain, and before long would be replaced by a single divan. But no, Dougal said, I like the bed. Miss Frierne smiled to herself that she had found such an obliging tenant. ‘Really, I do like it,’ Dougal said, ‘more than anything else in the room.’

  The two windows in the room pleased him, looking out on a lot of sky and down to Miss Frierne’s long lawn and those of her neighbours; beyond them lay the back gardens belonging to the opposite street of houses, but these were neglected, overgrown and packed with junk and sheds for motor-bicycles, not neat like Miss Frierne’s and the row of gardens on the near side, with their borders and sometimes a trellis bower.

  He saw a little door, four feet high, where the attic ceiling met the wall. He opened it, and found a deep long cupboard using up the remainder of the roof-slope. Having stooped to enter the cupboard, Dougal found he could almost walk in it. He came out, pleased with his fairly useless cave, and started putting away his shirts in the dark painted chest of drawers. He stroked the ceiling, that part of it which sloped down within reach. Some white powdery distemper came off on his fingers. He went downstairs to telephone to Jinny. Her number was engaged.

  The linoleum in his room was imitation parquetry and shone with polish. Two small patterned mats and one larger one made islands on the wide floor. Dougal placed a pile of his clothes on each island, then hauled it over the polished floor to the wardrobe. He unlocked his typewriter and arranged his belongings, as all his student-life in Edinburgh Jinny used to do for him. One day in their final year, at Leith docks, watching the boats, she had said: ‘I must bend over the rails. I’ve got that indigestion.’ Already, at this first stage in her illness, he had shown no sympathy. ‘Jinny, everyone will think you’re drunk. Stand up.’ In the course of her illness she stopped calling him a crooked fellow, and instead became bitter, calling him sometimes a callous swine or a worm. ‘I hate sickness, not you,’ he had said. Still, at that time he had forced himself to visit her sometimes in the Infirmary. He got his degree, and was thought of as frivolous in the pubs, not being a Nationalist. Jinny’s degree was delayed a year, he meanwhile spending that year in France and f
inally London, where he lived in Earls Court and got through his money waiting for Jinny.

  For a few weeks he spent much of his time in the flat of the retired actress and singer, Maria Cheeseman, in Chelsea, who had once shared a stage with an aunt of Jinny’s.

  He went to meet Jinny at last at King’s Cross. She had bright high cheek-bones and brown straight hair. They could surely be married in six months’ time. ‘I’ve to go into hospital again,’ said Jinny. ‘I’ve to have an operation this time. I’ve a letter to a surgeon in the Middlesex Hospital.

  ‘You’ll come and visit me there?’ she said.

  ‘No, quite honestly, I won’t,’ Dougal said. ‘You know how I feel about places of sickness. I’ll write to you every day.’

  She got a room in Kensington, went into hospital two weeks later, was discharged on a Saturday, and wrote to tell Dougal not to meet her at the hospital and she was glad he had got the job in Peckham, and was writing Miss Cheeseman’s life, and she hoped he would do well in life.

  ‘Jinny. I’ve found a room in Peckham. I can come over and see you if you like.’

  ‘I’ve left some milk on the stove. I’ll ring you back.’

  Dougal tried on one of his new white shirts and tilted the mirror on the dressing-table to see himself better. Already it seemed that Peckham brought out something in him that Earls Court had overlooked. He left the room and descended the stairs. Miss Frierne came out of her front room.

  ‘Have you got everything you want, Mr Douglas?’

  ‘You and I,’ said Dougal, ‘are going to get on fine.’

  ‘You’ll do well at Meadows Meade, Mr Douglas. I’ve had fellows before from Meadows Meade.’

  ‘Just call me Dougal,’ said Dougal.

  ‘Douglas,’ she said, pronouncing it ‘Dooglass’, ‘No, Dougal — Douglas is my surname.’

  ‘Oh, Dougal Douglas. Dougal’s the first name.’

  ‘That’s right, Miss Frierne. What buses do you take for Kensington?’

  ‘It’s my one secret weakness,’ he said to Jinny.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ he said. ‘Sickness kills me.

  ‘Be big,’ he said, ‘be strong. Be a fine woman, Jinny.

  ‘Understand me,’ he said, ‘try to understand my fatal flaw. Everybody has one.’

  ‘It’s time I had my lie-down,’ she said. ‘I’ll ring you when I’m stronger.’

  ‘Ring me tomorrow.’

  ‘All right, tomorrow.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘I don’t know. Some time.’

  ‘You would think we had never been lovers, you speak so coldly,’ he said. ‘Ring me at eleven in the morning. Will you be awake by then?’

  ‘All right, eleven.’ He leaned one elbow on the back of his chair. She was unmoved. He smiled intimately. She closed her eyes.

  ‘You haven’t asked for my number,’ he said.

  ‘All right, leave your number.’

  He wrote it on a bit of paper and returned south of the river to Peckham. There, as Dougal entered the saloon bar of the Morning Star, Nelly Mahone crossed the road in her rags crying, ‘Praise be to the Lord, almighty and eternal, wonderful in the dispensation of all his works, the glory of the faithful and the life of the just.’ As Dougal bought his drink, Humphrey Place came up and spoke to him. Dougal recalled that Humphrey Place, refrigerator engineer of Freeze-eezy’s, was living in the room below his and had been introduced to him by Miss Frierne that morning. Afterwards Miss Frierne had told Dougal, ‘He is dean and go-ahead.’

  Chapter 3

  ‘WHAT d’you mean by different?’ Mavis said.

  ‘I don’t know. He’s just different. Says funny things. You have to laugh,’ Dixie said.

  ‘He’s just an ordinary chap,’ Humphrey said. ‘Nice chap. Ordinary.’

  But Dixie could see that Humphrey did not mean it. Humphrey knew that Douglas was different. Humphrey had been talking a good deal about Douglas during the past fortnight and how they sat up talking late at Miss Frierne’s.

  ‘Better fetch him here to tea one night.’ said Dixie’s stepfather. ‘Let’s have a look at him.’

  ‘He’s too high up in the Office,’ Mavis said.

  ‘He’s on research,’ Dixie said. ‘He’s brainy, supposed to be. But he’s friendly, I’ll say that.’

  ‘He’s no snob,’ said Humphrey.

  ‘He hasn’t got nothing to be a snob about,’ said Dixie.

  ‘Anything, not nothing.’

  ‘Anything,’ said Dixie, ‘to be a snob about. He’s no better than us just because he’s twenty-three and got a good job.’

  ‘But he’s got to do his overtime for nothing,’ Mavis said.

  ‘He’s the same as what we are,’ Dixie said.

  ‘You said he was different.’

  ‘Well, but no better than us. I don’t know why you sit up talking at nights with him.’

  Humphrey sat up late in Dougal’s room.

  ‘My father’s in the same trade. He puts himself down as a fitter. Same job.’

  ‘It is right and proper,’ Dougal said, ‘that you should be called a refrigerator engineer. It brings lyricism to the concept.’

  ‘I don’t trouble myself about that,’ Humphrey said. ‘But what you call a job makes a difference to the Unions. My dad doesn’t see that.’

  ‘Do you like brass bedsteads?’ Dougal said. ‘We had them at home. We used to unscrew the knobs and hide the fag ends inside.’

  ‘By common law,’ Humphrey said, ‘a trade union has no power to take disciplinary action against its members. By common law a trade union cannot fine, suspend, or expel its members. It can only do so contractually. That is, by its rules.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Dougal, who was lolling on his brass bed.

  ‘You can use your imagination,’ Humphrey said. ‘If a member is expelled from a union that operates a closed shop…’

  ‘Ghastly,’ said Dougal, who was trying to unscrew one of the knobs.

  ‘But all that won’t concern you much,’ Humphrey said. ‘What you want to know about for your human research is arbitration in trade disputes. There’s the Conciliation Act 1896 and the Industrial Courts Act 1919, but you wouldn’t need to go into those. You might study the Industrial Disputes Order 1951. But you aren’t likely to have a dispute at Meadows, Meade & Grindley. You might have an issue, though.’

  ‘Is there a difference?’

  ‘Oh, a vast difference. Sometimes they take it to law to decide whether an issue or a dispute has arisen. It’s been as far as the Court of Appeal. I’ll let you have the books. Issue is whether certain employers should observe certain terms of employment. Dispute is any dispute between employer and employee as to terms of employment or conditions of labour.’

  ‘Terrific,’ Dougal said. ‘You must have given your mind to it.’

  ‘I took a course. But you’ll soon get to know what’s what in Industrial Relations.’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Dougal said. ‘Everything is fascinating. to me, so far. Do you know what I came across the other day? An account of the fair up the road at Camberwell Green.’

  ‘Fair?’

  ‘According to Colburn’s Calendar of Amusements 1840,’ Dougal said. He reached for his notebook, leaned on his elbow, heaved his high shoulder and read:

  There is here, and only here, to be seen what you can see nowhere else, the lately caught and highly accomplished young mermaid, about whom the continental journals have written so ably. She combs her hair in the manner practised in China, and admires herself in a glass in the manner practised everywhere. She has had the best instructors in every peculiarity of education, and can argue on any given subject, from the most popular way of preserving plums, down to the necessity of a change of Ministers. She plays the harp in the new effectual style prescribed by Mr Bocha, of whom we wished her to take lessons, but, having some mermaiden scruples, she begged to be provided with a less popular master. Being so clever and accomplished, she can’t bear to be contradict
ed, and lately leaped out of her tub and floored a distinguished fellow of the Royal Zoological Society, who was pleased to be more curious and cunning than she was pleased to think agreeable. She has composed various poems for the periodicals, and airs with variations for the harp and piano, all very popular and pleasing.

  Dougal gracefully cast his book aside. ‘How I should like to meet a mermaid!’ he said.

  ‘Terrific,’ Humphrey said. ‘You make it up?’ he asked. ‘No, I copied it out of an old book in the library. My research. Mendelssohn wrote his ‘Spring Song’ in Ruskin Park. Ruskin lived on Denmark Hill. Mrs Fitzherbert lived in Camberwell Grove. Boadicea committed suicide on Peckham Rye probably where the bowling green is now, I should imagine. But, look here, how would you like to be engaged to marry a mermaid that writes poetry?’

  ‘Fascinating,’ Humphrey said.

  Dougal gazed at him like a succubus whose mouth is its eyes.

  Humphrey’s friend, Trevor Lomas, had said Dougal was probably pansy.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Humphrey had replied. ‘He’s got a girl somewhere.’

  ‘Might be versatile.’

  ‘Could be.’

  Dougal said, ‘The boss advised me to mix with everybody in the district, high and low. I should like to mix with that mermaid.’

  Dougal put a record on the gramophone he had borrowed from Elaine Kent in the textile factory. It was a Mozart Quartet. He slid the rugs aside with his foot and danced to the music on the bare linoleum, with stricken movements of his hands. He stopped when the record stopped, replaced the rugs, and said, ‘I must get to know some of the youth clubs. Dixie will be a member of a youth club, I expect.’

  ‘She isn’t,’ Humphrey said rather rapidly.

  Dougal opened a bottle of Algerian wine. He took his time, and with a pair of long tweezers fished out a bit of cork that had dropped inside the bottle. He held up the pair of tweezers.

  ‘I use these,’ he said, ‘to pluck out the hairs which grow inside my nostrils, and which are unsightly. Eventually, I lose the tweezers, then I buy another pair.’